I got a text message today from an anonymous someone who wanted to talk about the 2020 Presidential election.
The posed question was, “Who do you like for President in 2020?” I texted back, “Anyone but Trump!”
The reply to that was a brief texted promo for Elizabeth Warren, the “wonderful ideas” that she has for the country, and more conversation intended to rope me in. At that point, I texted that I was busy and had to move on: the whole thing sounded fishy.
To be fair, I’ve had similar unwanted intrusions to my privacy pop up on my Internet browser, usually asking “How do you think President Trump is doing?”
Does that really deserve an answer?
I am sure that today’s text message would have eventually culminated in a request for a campaign donation, ostensibly for Senator Warren. Of course, there is no way of knowing who was on the other end of that text communication.
It could be the Warren for President campaign, it could be Trump’s folks, it could be the Russians or the Iranians or the Chinese or…it could be a televangelist who needs a new Gulfstream VI.
Who knows?
In 2016, according to the Mueller Report, thousands of people were bilked by the Russians who used “Hillary for President” campaign donations to support their clandestine efforts to see Donald Trump elected. It worked.
That’s the problem these days: one doesn’t know who they are really talking to on the Internet, on Facebook, or when responding to a text message from an out-of-state area code. The friendly guy on the other end could be a techie sitting in a cubicle within the North Korea Defense Ministry or some Nigerian teenager pounding computer keys at a coffee shop in Lagos. Who knows? Who can you trust?
It is evident that a sizable number of American citizens trust anything that our President says, despite the fact that he spends most of any given day lying about the achievements of his Administration, even when his lies are demonstrably false.
Our Fearless Leader lies about everything, then lies about his lying. And, then fires people who won’t lie about the lying that he’s lying about.
Unfortunately for America, there’s a whole lot of gullible folks out there that still believe this mean-spirited and ruthless demagogue, and his daily Tweets, public diatribes, and mean-spirited comments at rallies and on Fox News play to this crowd.
It is quite apparent from the past few week’s news headlines that the 2020 elections will be “anything goes” as far as the Republican Party is concerned. Gerrymandering and voter suppression tactics will again be used extensively, and slanderous “hit job” ads are already appearing.
And, it appears that the Party has basically caved to the ruthless President who is now publicly asking for (and, in some cases, using the Federal government to extort) foreign government support for his political campaign against his Democratic opponents.
Nothing could be more anti-democratic. The guy has no shame.
Impeachment inquiry proceedings have subsequently been begun by the House of Representatives against the President, whose response has basically been an upraised middle finger.
Any red-blooded American who didn’t sleep through high school civics class knows that this is illegal. Yet, our President, who claimed that he didn’t collude with Russia, is now openly colluding with foreign countries to win his next election.
The overlying White House strategy seems to be one of delay, in the hopes that this unsavory matter will not be resolved until after the 2020 election. So far, the Trump folks are ignoring document requests from Congressional committees, calling the inquiries about atrocious Administration actions “partisan” and “treasonous”, and refusing to allow public employees to testify before Congress.
Both the Department of Justice and the Republican-controlled Senate have been busy attempting to shield the shakedown artist.
The President has subsequently doubled down on his outlandish behavior, publicly asking additional foreign countries (China!) for dirt on his political rivals, while simultaneously negotiating (via Twitter) trade deals with the same countries.
The President’s men have launched a furious campaign to root out the whistleblower (Trump called him a “spy” and a “traitor”) who, under the Federal Whistleblower Act of 1989 actually performed the patriotic act of reporting an unlawful act.
We can expect some additional whistleblowing as the Impeachment Inquiry heats up.
And, we can expect the Administration to say and do just about anything to discredit any claims of wrongdoing. The shit is going to hit the fan in the coming months. The President has already intimated that a “Civil War” may result, and he’s pushing a theory right now that the Constitutional provision giving Congress the authority to impeach is…unconstitutional!
(Gee, even Richard Nixon didn’t think of that one. Nor, for that matter, did Bill Clinton.)
If Donald Trump succeeds in this sick political power play, then the United States will cease to have two (or more) political parties. We will then be a dictatorship…which was probably Mr. Trump’s intention from the beginning. He’s a narcissistic egomaniac, and he doesn’t care what he does to our country as long as it stokes his massive ego.
I am sick to my stomach that this kind of Presidential behavior is taking place in my lifetime. My parents’ generation gave blood, sweat, and tears in World War II to avoid such a catastrophe. It is amazing, really, that our Nation has sunken this low in only seven decades.
And, the irony is that Donald Trump campaigned to “Make America Great Again”. Just the opposite is happening, on our watch.
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan would vomit if they were alive to see this debasement of their precious democracy and the United States’ esteem throughout the world.
